It’s amazing how many decisions we have to make each day. A survey I read said the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions per day. When you look at the number you think, there’s no way that’s accurate, but look deeper. Not every decision you make is a monumental one. When you wake up will you hit the snooze button or will you not? Are you going to get up and use the bathroom or feed the dog first? Brush your teeth? Eat? What are you doing to wear? Are you going to watch TV? What are you going to watch? When are you leaving the house to go to work? Which direction are you going to go? Right there we’re at about 10 and we haven’t left the house yet.

Our mind doesn’t see all the little decisions we make as a big deal because it’s part of our every day routine. Hopefully all of us want to brush our teeth and get dressed before we leave the house. I think if you took a survey and asked people how many decisions they make each day the number would be somewhere around 30, maybe 40. You d see answers like “had to pick up the kids” or “had to finish an important project and not put it off another day”. Not realizing that in between getting the kids they probably made about fifty or so other decisions like, what radio station do I want to listen to or am I going to cut off this jerk in front of me that’s talking on his phone.

Some people are just not great decision makers. We all have that friend or family member that just can’t decide on what they want. You go to a diner and their looking at the menu like it’s the SAT. Should I have the hamburger? What are you going to get? Is the fish good here? A half hour later when the angry waitress does take your order you’re just praying she doesn’t accidentally drop your food on the way back out of the kitchen. It brings up the question of why. Why are some people better at making decisions than others?

In the game of basketball just like the game of life one bad decision can make or break you. As a coach if you call a play that doesn’t work out in the last seconds of the game and your team loses it’s your fault. People won’t look at the thirty nine minutes of basketball up until that end of the game situation, they will remember the last second. In that instant you have a chance to be the hero or the goat. If you make the wrong decision people question what you were thinking calling that play and why didn’t you have player A just do this because you would of been successful for sure. The same thing happens in normal everyday life.

Lives have changed for the better or worse based on the decisions that they make. In 1986 a famous college basketball player named Len Bias was drafted to the Boston Celtics as the 2nd overall pick. Bias was a college all American and projected by many to be a sure fire hall of fame player. Two days after the NBA draft Bias went to party with some friends and overdosed on what was said to be cocaine and died that night. Reports from friends and family members alike said that Bias never did drugs but for whatever reason that night he did. One bad decision and his life was over. The whole country was shocked that this could happen to someone like Len Bias. He made a mistake and paid for it with his life.

Some of our decisions aren’t always life and death but still have a major effect on what direction our lives go. If I never chose to coach basketball at Sussex County College I have no idea what direction my life would of went. That one decision has made it possible for me to meet hundreds of people, some of them who are like family to me and my wife. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

“Bad decisions are easier to live with if their your own”

Reading our history books growing up you hear about so many great leaders that have made the right decision at the right time to change the course of history. What we don’t often read is how many wrong decisions they’ve made before they made the correct one. Decision making is trial and error sometimes. You learn from mistakes. You chose to wait to study for the exam until the night before the final, the next day you got an F lesson learned. I feel the difference with some of our world’s historical figures and people that aren’t great decision makers is they were not afraid to make a decision even if it cost them their job, reputation, or in some cases their lives.

Another difference between some of these leaders and average folks is the decisions they made for the most part were their own. Everyone wants to throw in their input on how everyone else should do things. How to dress, what car or house to buy etc. Ultimately you have to be content with the decisions that you make because at the end of the day whatever happens because of it is on you. Personally I wouldn’t want it any other way. If I mess up  I don’t want to put the onus on anyone else but myself.

Practice also makes perfect. If other people make the decisions in your life for you, how do you expect to be able to step up when their not around to hold your hand through it? You make an average of 35,000 decisions per day so 1 shouldn’t be a problem!